Watch out, Flipboard. As of Wednesday, you have some serious competition: a free app called Zite that is constantly learning what you like to read on the iPad and creating a magazine finely tailored to your needs.

Many iPad owners who have used the free Flipboard app for any length of time are familiar with its promise and its shortcomings. Sure, it looks cool — enter your Twitter name and Facebook account, and it turns those feeds into a magazine, complete with gorgeous photos, headlines and virtually flippable pages. That’s why Apple named it iPad app of the year for 2010. The app also offers its own curated news feeds and can now plug into your Flickr account.

But how often do you actually read it? Does Flipboard really help you discover content that got buried in your Twitter feed overnight? How’s that unfiltered Facebook feed in magazine form working out for you?

“What’s broken is there’s so much stuff out there, and I don’t know how to get to it,” says Ali Devar, Zite’s founder and CEO. “There’s no automatic system that’s catching the important stuff I miss every day. Search doesn’t solve it. Social doesn’t solve it. A lot of [Zite beta testers] came back to us and said, ‘Thank goodness, here’s something that gives me my content and more, but filters it for me.’ People are feeling the pain, and they need it resolved.”

Zite pulls in stories from your Twitter feed, if you wish, or your Google Reader account. Neither are necessary. You can also choose from hundreds of topics you’re interested in or start with the plain-vanilla version of the magazine. That also is not required. Every story comes with thumbs up and thumbs down icons and a button to request more of that kind of story. But none of this is truly important.

The app’s secret sauce is this: It learns from your everyday reading. It’s constantly watching what kind of stories you click on, how long those stories are, how long you’re reading them for — and just as importantly, the stories you don’t click on. (It’ll give you less of those.) Just as Netflix and Amazon bring you movies and products that users similar to you liked, Zite is doing constant behind-the-scenes comparisons between readers, both inside the app and on the web in general.

“You should be able to notice right away that Zite is giving you stories that are meaningful to you,” says Devar. — Mashable

In a refreshingly honest statement, Samsung’s mobile division VP Lee Don-Joo admitted that the iPad 2 made some parts of Samsung’s 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab look “inadequate,” and the iPad 2′s pricing might force Samsung to lower the price of its tablet.

“Apple made it very thin (…) We will have to improve the parts that are inadequate,” Lee Don-Joo told Yonhap News Agency. We feel that a bit of information might have gotten lost in translation from Korean to English, as we definitely don’t expect Samsung to pull the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab from the market and release a thinner version. It’s more likely that Samsung simply sees the iPad 2′s thinness as a big challenge for its future tablet models.

The other part of Lee Don-Joo’s statement is clearer and far more telling. “The 10-inch (tablet) was to be priced higher than the 7-inch, but we will have to think that over,” he said.

Samsung, unlike some of its competitors — for example, the Motorola Xoom — won’t try to compete with the iPad at a higher price point just because some of the hardware of its tablet looks better on paper and that, in our opinion, is the right approach. Apple has set the price for its tablet in the $499 – $829 price range (with the cheapest 3G-sporting option being priced at $629), and any Android tablet will have a hard time competing with the iPad 2 at a price too near the upper end of that spectrum.

(CNN) — It was a magical performance from a consummate performer, on that we can all agree.

Speaking for a little more than an hour, in a voice that has lost little of its calm intensity, Steve Jobs mesmerized the audience Wednesday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and by extension the world.

His introduction of the iPad 2 did quadruple duty — it enticed mainstream customers, wowed spec-hunting tech geeks, tweaked his competitors and pleased Wall Street. Future presidential candidates would do well to study it.

Essentially, Jobs was selling a dream that could set your rib cage thumping with desire.

“Technology alone is not enough,” he said in one of the day’s more lyrical asides. “Technology married with liberal arts, humanities, yields the result that makes our hearts sing.”

But a dream-made reality comes with limitations and imperfections, especially in the gadget business. Like any good magician, Jobs used sleight of hand to distract from the things we’re not supposed to see.

On the morning after, it’s time to take leave of our hearts, return to our heads and name them.

Man on wire

Magicians who use wires in their act don’t let you see them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. In this case, the wire is the same old white cable that you’ll have to use to sync your iPad to your PC or Mac from Day One.

Yes, apps such as Audiogalaxy or Air Server let you stream music and video to the iPad via Wi-Fi, but they don’t remove the need to hook up to iTunes to back up or sync content for most apps.

In a device that’s supposed to be about effortless connecting, and a world that is moving to cloud syncing, this is an increasingly clunky throwback.

Memory man

How much memory will the new iPad have? We don’t know, because Jobs didn’t tell us. Given that he ticked off all the other major specs of the device, it seems an odd omission. Could it be because its memory is exactly the same as the original iPad — 256 megabytes?

That would look embarrassingly paltry next to iPad competitors such as the Motorola Xoom or the HP Touchpad, which both boast 1 gigabyte of RAM.

Gadget blog Gizmodo claims an Apple employee quoted 256 megabytes when demonstrating the product, only to have the claim walked back by a PR handler. We’ll wait for better proof.

But there is another kind of memory that we know is exactly the same on iPad 2: storage space. The Apple tablet still maxes out at 64 gigabytes. Sure, the competition isn’t beating that yet. But given the standard pace of technological improvement, one would expect a 128-gigabyte hard drive by now. Could tablet design have reached some kind of inherent size limit?

Behind the screen

Contrary to what the rumor mill had been expecting, there was no improvement in screen resolution — meaning the iPad 2 is already lagging behind the iPhone 4, with its much-touted retina display. (An iPhone 5 is expected later this year.)

And while Jobs told us how many frames per second of video the new iPad’s cameras would shoot, he didn’t mention megapixels. This is not a spec he has been shy about announcing when it came to iPhone models.

Holding back?

In all the hoopla, it’s easy to forget that many features announced for iPad 2 were expected — and were technically possible — in iPad 1. It was widely remarked at the time that Apple was deliberately holding back built-in cameras, for one, so that the iPad 2 could launch with a larger splash.

Barring some mass outbreak of leaks at the notoriously tight ship that is One Infinite Loop, we’ll likely never know the truth. But we do know that one “new” feature touted Wednesday — the ability to use the mute button to lock the orientation of the screen — was originally available in iPad 1. The button only changed its purpose when iOS4 was introduced.

So what, if anything, is Apple deliberately holding back for iPad 3? A memory boost? Retina display? Cloud sync? Stereo speakers? (Yes, the iPad 2 is still mono.)

One thing we can be pretty sure of — there will be another peerless presentation of achingly beautiful tablet technology this time next year.

So what does the iPad 2 have that the original iPad did not? Well, for one, it’s smaller: 33 percent thinner than its predecessor and just a smidge lighter. (The iPad 2 weighs 1.3 pounds and the first iPad weighed a-not-exactly-chunky 1.5 pounds.) Meanwhile, the iPad 2 gets a pair of cameras – one rear-facing and one front-facing for FaceTime chat – and a gyroscope, just like the iPhone 4, which should improve gaming capability.

Operating speed is up, too, thanks to a Dual-core 1GHz A5 processor, Gizmodo reports. Thankfully, price points will remain the same across the board. A Wi-Fi-only iPad 2 will set you back $499, while 3G models start at $629. To recap: The iPad 2 is faster, lighter, skinnier, and exactly the same price as the iPad 1. (We’re assuming we’ll see some sort of price drop on remaining iPad units, but no word on that yet.)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who took a medical leave of absence earlier this year, was on hand today to unveil the iPad 2. “We’ve been working on this product for awhile and I didn’t want to miss today,” Jobs said, according to PC Magazine. Jobs said the iPad 2 would begin shipping in the US on March 11 and in other parts of the world on March 25; stateside, 3G service will be available through Verizon and AT&T.

Dual-core processor. The iPad 2 gets a custom A5 dual-core system-on-a-chip that’s allegedly twice as fast as the original iPad’s processor. The graphics performance is also said to be up to nine times faster than the iPad’s.

Lighter and thinner “than a supermodel on a diet.” The iPad 2 weighs in at 1.3 pounds and is 33% thinner than its predecessor –that’s even thinner than the iPhone 4.

Multiple versions at launch. The iPad 2 will be available in its standard metallic hue as well as a white version, and it will launch on AT&T as well as Verizon — sans the improvised MiFi setup this time.